


A watch in the night

by ingreatwaters



Category: Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 14:17:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13055691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ingreatwaters/pseuds/ingreatwaters
Summary: It may be the captain’s job to decide where the ship is going and what she will do, but it is the first lieutenant’s job to make sure that she gets there.





	A watch in the night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ailcia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ailcia/gifts).



Tom finishes his evening’s round, the ship fallen back into order, and comes back to the doctor’s bed. Higgins has gone to bed himself, weighed by responsibility and hoping no more injuries will arise, and Padeen slips away silently at a word from Tom, to rest for an hour or two at least.

Tom has made this evening round often, as the ship settles to the quiet steadiness of the night time routine, and although he is not much given to imagination it reminds him of walking with his father round the fields in the evening as a boy, of the way his father knew every foot of the land, knew when things were right, and knew where the troubles would come before they ever arose. An old pattern, and he feels better for following it.

It may be the captain’s job to decide where the ship is going and what she will do, but it is the first lieutenant’s job to make sure that she gets there. This is Tom’s world, not the captain’s illustrious but limited realm of quarterdeck and cabin, rigging and sailing direction, the officers’ reports and inspecting the divisions on Sundays, but the details of it, hold and stores, the men below, the gunroom and the midshipman’s berth, even the animals, now settling to sleep.

\---

It is not that he expects trouble, in general. For most of his time on her, the Surprise has been a happy ship on the whole – a ship sailing well under a popular and competent captain, with a crew more or less settled into one whole, a ship with a purpose and caught up in the joy of a chase. But he has known all through the voyage where they might come - the small physical weaknesses of a ship far from new, and the worries of her people, those few new to the sea and still not finding it their element, some, the captain among them, missing family and friends - and Tom is a new husband himself, so new that the pleasure of having brought it off almost outweighs the pain of parting - the occasional patient in pain, and poor Hollom, out of place in the rough and tumble of the midshipman’s berth and eventually feeling himself out of place everywhere.

It took him some time, all the same, to realise that the doctor may be one of them. Thinking back over it, the gunroom has not seen much of him on this voyage – meals, of course, except when he breakfasted with the captain, or took his turn in the rotation of guests to dinner in the Great Cabin, and he plays his part as a host with care when the captain visits in return. But he finds other places to be otherwise – on deck, in the fine weather which has accompanied most of their voyage, in his own small cabin, in the dispensary office by the sickbay, where he keeps many of his specimens from earlier in the voyage, and where he still accepts Blakeney’s company, although Tom does not think he asks for it - and in the great cabin, but even there disagreements seem more common than before.

Tom knows that he does not understand the doctor, any more than he understands the things which fascinate him so, but he has been a friend, after a fashion, since the early days of their first voyage together - made roughly equal then by Tom’s junior position and the doctor’s newness and poverty and ignorance of the sea, more truly equal now that they share the same gunroom, but always speaking easily together until now. They like and respect each in spite of differing interests, and in any case it might as well be said that Stephen does not understand Tom’s.

\---

Jack has noticed the change in Stephen too, without knowing that he has noticed, because it is nothing unusual for Stephen to be quiet, distracted, in a dream of his own or in full cry after some incomprehensible idea, oblivious to the state of the sea and the weather and constantly surprised by the simplest of changes.

He is not the only one not to speak, either. The midshipmen invited to the cabin are still often too awed to say more than please and thank you, the marine lieutenant’s topics of conversation are painfully limited, and Tom himself is often quiet, a friendly steady soul but one who prefers to watch and listen, in contrast to Mowett’s cheer and conversation. But Stephen’s withdrawal becomes more noticeable, more definite – he has never understood the workings of the ship, but he has often been curious about them, however misguidedly, has always taken pleasure in the friendly nature of those who run it, and now he seems now to have set himself apart from both completely.

\---

It is the accident, of course, which finally breaks this pattern, and breaks the tension of the ship.

Jack is wild with concern for his friend, but the first worry of the operation out of the way, he turns his concern back to the task he understands best, sailing the ship towards land as quickly and as cleanly as possible. So it is Tom, more often, who sits by the doctor’s bed through those first rushed hours, as they sail with a new purpose towards land and recovery, giving up his own rest because he can do no less for the man who has sewed up Tom’s own wounds, who sat with him through fevered nights.

Tom, too, who brings books and specimens from the ship to the camp on his trips back and forth, risking the captain’s displeasure to add to the doctor’s pleasure, and pleased and amused to find the doctor looking a little like a schoolboy caught out in mischief. But they both look, now, much more at ease, the doctor sleeping and waking to read or dream and sleep again, the captain throwing himself into the preparations for the continued voyage as if he has never heard the name Acheron, never had not a moment to lose – as if he feels genuinely released from a nightmare chase. Perhaps they will set off after her again, cruising the whaling grounds in the hope of finding her doing the same thing, perhaps they will head for home. For now, the far side of the world seems quite a pleasant place.


End file.
